Gasoline, diesel prices to drop 3% on Jan. 1

Gasoline prices will drop 3% on Friday Jan. 1 as a result of the next step toward an unregulated gasoline market in Mexico when a new pricing scheme goes into effect.

Unlike 2015, when a single gasoline price was officially calculated and established at the beginning of the year, 2016 will be characterized by monthly fluctuations, following the behavior of the international market.

The Finance Secretariat (SHCP) announced that the maximum price of magna will drop 41 centavos to 13.16 pesos per liter, and premium to 13.98. The price of diesel will drop to 13.77 pesos per liter. It will be the first time in nearly seven years that fuel prices will have dropped.

Monthly prices will be set within a range of no more than 3% above or below the previous month’s price, said Revenue Undersecretary Miguel Messmacher Linartas, who explained that the idea behind the pricing scheme was to allow consumers to get used to an unregulated market.

He said new pricing scheme comes as a result of energy reforms, which call for a completely liberalized market by 2018. As part of the transition process, service stations other than Pemex franchises will be able to operate beginning Friday.

By 2017, the market will be opened to allow gasoline imports.

In the north, meanwhile, fuel prices will remain lower than the rest of the country, at up to 9.59 pesos within 20 kilometers of the border, a continuing strategy intended to dissuade Mexican drivers from crossing the border to buy their fuel in the U.S.

Despite the strategy, some of those drivers have been ticked that Texans can buy Pemex gas for seven pesos now that the state oil company has opened a station in Houston, its first outside Mexico.

The president of the Association of Mexican Gas Station Owners, Pablo González Córdova, said customers in northern Mexico, when asked if they wish magna or premium, say they want neither.